HM275 Breaking out of the Frame with Kerri Hummingbird

Please be aware that we speak about suicide during this episode.

What if you could harness the power of ancient traditions to awaken a sense of authenticity, passion, and purpose in your life? That’s the intriguing concept we unpacked in a profound conversation with Kerri Hummingbird, medicine woman, mother, mentor, and founder of the Inner Medicine Training and Mystery School. We delve deep into her latest work, “Inner Medicine: Becoming One with Mother Earth for the Survival of Humanity,” exploring the significance of traditions from the Andes and Himalayas in claiming our wisdom and living our purpose.

We get real about the prevalent issue of over-prescription of medication, questioning its physical, mental, and spiritual implications. Kerri and I dissect the concept of inner medicine, discussing its transformative potential, from altering one’s metabolism to mending one’s mitochondria.

Highlights:

·       Inner Medicine’s Transformational Power

·       Individualized Approaches in Medicine

·       How diagnosis can be empowering or limiting or a “curse” (and what is a curse)

·       Borderline / BPD Recovery

·       Healing Beliefs and Identity

·       What to do when you’re Overwhelmed

·       Kerri’s compassionate take on Narcissism

·       How to recognize the False Personality

About Kerri Hummingbird

Kerri Hummingbird, Medicine Woman, Mother and Mentor, is the Founder of Inner Medicine Training, a Mystery School that shares potent ancient traditions from the Andes and Himalayas for owning your wisdom and living your purpose. She is the best-selling author of multiple books including “Inner Medicine: Becoming One with Mother Earth for the Survival of Humanity”, “The Second Wave: Transcending the Human Drama”, and “Love Is Fierce: Healing the Mother Wound.”

For a free grounding meditation >>> https://www.kerrihummingbird.com/innermedicine

Kerri’s Podcast:  Soul Nectar Show

Kerri’s previous interview>>>  HM211:  Healing the Mother Wound

About Dr. Liz

Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and hypnosis to people wanting a fast, easy way to transform all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.

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A problem shared is a problem halved. In person and online hypnosis and CBT for healing and transformation. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.drlizhypnosis.com.

Listened to in over 140 countries, Hypnotize Me is the podcast about hypnosis, transformation, and healing. Certified hypnotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dr. Liz Bonet, discusses hypnosis and interviews professionals doing transformational work

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Transcript

0:00:01 – Dr. Liz

Welcome. I’m Dr Liz, an entrepreneur, speaker, podcaster, mom and wife. This podcast is about hypnosis, but also about all kinds of ways to help you live your fullest life, to heal, transform, to play the long game and go after the joy. You can see more about me at drlizhypnosiscom. Hop over there to get a free hypnosis file to decrease fear and anxiety, or one to increase emotional stability. They’re there just for you. I hope you enjoy the podcast as much as I do. Peace. Hey everyone.

Dr Liz, here I am back from about a month break of the podcast, so it’s September 2023, and August was full of changes. My oldest daughter graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art history from Florida State University, moved and got a job and is working and all good stuff for being a self-supporting adult. My youngest started her senior year of high school. It’s a lot of big transitions in August this year and it felt really good just to take some time off from the podcast and the newsletter and just focus on the two of them for a little bit. I still work to my private practice, which takes a certain number of hours a week, but the podcast and newsletter definitely take up a lot of time outside of that, so it felt nice just to give myself a little break there Some time, not just physically, but emotionally as well, to experience all these transitions going on in my own family.

Let’s jump into this interview with Kerri Hummingbird. This is the second time she’s been on the podcast. The other time was in 2021, where she talked about healing the mother wound, and that link is in the show notes in case you want to go listen to that one. Before we jump into this one, I do want to let you know that we do talk about suicide in this interview a couple of times. Just be aware of that. If this isn’t the day for you to have that come up, then perhaps choose another episode and either wait till it’s a better time or maybe just skip this one. Who knows, this one isn’t for you, for everyone else, I hope you enjoy the interview and get some good insights for your own life. Peace.

Hi Kerri! Welcome back to the Hypnotize Me podcast.

0:02:45 – Kerri Hummingbird

Oh, I’m so grateful to be back here and to share more messages of goodness and have a nice conversation with you today.

0:02:51 – Dr. Liz

I am so happy you’re here too. I really am. I really enjoyed our first interview, and that one for the listeners, will be in the show notes, and I’m looking forward to this one just as much. So let me tell the audience a little bit about you first.

Kerri Hummingbird is a medicine woman, mother and mentor. She’s the founder of the Inner Medicine Training and Mystery School that shares potent ancient traditions from the Andes and Himalayas for owning your wisdom and living your purpose. She is the number one international best-selling author of the Second Wave Transcending your Human Drama in Love is Fierce Healing the Mother Wound and the host of the Soul Nectar Show. So Kerri started her podcast around the same time that I did actually. So we’re on similar podcasting journeys I would say spiritual as well in different ways, but absolutely we have some parallels in our lives that are pretty amazing actually. So she inspires people to lead their lives wide awake, with an authenticity, passion and purpose that positively impacts others, and her newest book is out. It is Inner Medicine becoming one. Oh, what’s the whole title, Kerri?

0:04:12 – Kerri Hummingbird

Becoming one with Mother Earth for the survival of humanity.

0:04:16 – Dr. Liz

Okay, inner Medicine, becoming one with Mother Earth for the survival of humanity, and I just read the whole thing. It’s a long book, but I loved it. I really did. It’s organized, but I’m going to have her talk about it, as well as the messages that I think both of us are communicating these days. So let’s jump in. Kerri, how about you tell us about this new book that you’ve published?

0:04:44 – Kerri Hummingbird

Yeah, absolutely Well as most of my books go. I get the download. Oh, you’re writing a new book. This one took a little fits and starts to come in because I had some other books there. I thought I was writing and I started writing them and then I just lost energy on it. Maybe that was just to keep me busy until this one. And then it was like, oh, I’m writing the book. Like I’m writing the book that’s going to be my medicine. I’m going to share this with people. Like this is my curriculum. Oh, okay, that’s kind of a big deal.

So, yeah, I mean, without trying to get myself all twisted up and knots over it, trying to make it perfect, I just said, okay, this is going to be my teaching book, all right. So for the last, I would say 12 years. I always have to keep checking the time. It might be 13. I don’t know. 12 years.

0:05:38 – Dr. Liz

How long?

0:05:38 – Kerri Hummingbird

has it been since I entered this pathway, and I’ve been learning about the four directions. I’ve been learning about the planet and her emissaries of support to help us get oriented in a loving, compassionate direction on the planet, in our lives, and I’ve been learning about earth wisdom, and so this book is really my expression and sharing of what I’ve learned over the last 12 years in a format that allows people to take a medicine journey.

0:06:19 – Dr. Liz

So I really did like the format that is organized in the four directions and then it has it just has information specific to those, not just about your journey but about the ways that you yourself can work with it as a reader.

0:06:35 – Kerri Hummingbird

Yeah, exactly, I mean, that’s the first thing we do. Right, Like right in the first part of the book is okay, this is a medicine journey. If you’ve never had a plant medicine ceremony, this is the same thing, but without the plant. This is a medicine journey.

Right, it’s the spirit of the plants are helping you. The spirit of the Apus, the sacred mountains, the spirit of everything is off is helping you, and you can set that sacred intention at the beginning of the book and then step through the book with that intention. It actually starts to work you in your life and you’ll start to see like synchronicity open up, or realizations open up, or oh, wow, that’s what that’s about and that’s because all the guides of the medicine are supporting you and having that realization. So I’m really I’m pleased with that, because that means I can help a lot of people all at once. Without you know, I can only take like 15 students at a time in a class, because that’s my capacity as, as a human design type, I’m like only geared for small groups, but in this way I can help a lot of people because the medicine journey is the book and so it’s exciting for me to be in that space and to see it work too. It’s like, oh, realization is happening, yeah.

0:07:47 – Dr. Liz

Yeah, I mean you. If I remember correctly, you had a lot of sales even before it published. I did.

0:07:54 – Kerri Hummingbird

I mean I got to number one before it even went published.

0:07:57 – Dr. Liz

That was it, yeah, and I totally believe it too.

0:08:03 – Kerri Hummingbird

Yeah, it was cool too, because I mean as a teacher, as an emerging teacher, you know shamanism, it’s like I got into the. Australia was my, my first stop on the number one, you know experience and the shamanism category on Amazon and I look it up and here’s both of my books Awakening to Me was my first book and inner medicine, both on the shamanism chart at the same time in the really high numbers like number one, and then whatever the number was for, the.

Awakening to Me. And then all around me are all of my teachers.

0:08:39 – Dr. Liz

I kid you not, I screen captured it.

0:08:42 – Kerri Hummingbird

It’s like I want to post this on my wall, Like all of my teachers that helped me to gain the wisdom inside my own body. Here they all are, like kind of sandwiching me in love, you know, on the chart.

0:08:55 – Dr. Liz

Oh, that’s super sweet, yes, so tell us about inner, inner medicine. Like what do you? What do you mean by the term? Walk us through some of what it means for people and how they could use it to help transform their lives.

0:09:11 – Kerri Hummingbird

Well, I love it because, Dr Liz, you do inner medicine with people like you, help people access their inner medicine. Because when you’re working in the psychiatry field or the psychology field or you’ve been subject to it, and the way it’s been up till now designed, it’s kind of like there’s this idea that there’s the expert and then there’s you as the person on the couch and that the expert knows more about your life than you know about your life, and that’s that the expert can decide, like you know, put you in a category or a label or a box and kind of like, decide this is who you are. And that doesn’t work for me. It worked, you know, I tried that for 20 years and that really left me really limited and kind of feeling like powerless and helpless to do anything about my situation.

And I found myself slipping into this place that I don’t normally go into, of like Well, I guess, if this is my diagnosis, I can’t do anything about it. I’m, you know, it’s not my fault, I’m acting out, it’s not my fault I’m doing these things, so I can’t really help it. So I’ll just keep doing those things because it’s not really my fault anyway. And I, you know, I got in this place of like Well, that’s just a lie.

0:10:25 – Dr. Liz

Absolutely. That is a lie. Why am I?

0:10:28 – Kerri Hummingbird

telling myself this and then the medications don’t work, right? I was actually just referred to this book recently because of some other situations going on in my life and it’s like I think more and more doctors are coming to this conclusion that you know it’s not. The medications only work for a short time, they don’t work forever, and so you have to start asking like, why is that? Why don’t the medications work? And the book that I was referred to as brain energy, by Christopher M Palmer, md. Okay, md, this is a doctor, this is a psychiatrist, and he’s saying in this book that he was helping all of these people to you know, the same way that I just described, right, as the expert in diagnosing them and giving them a pill and all this kind of and telling them it’s going to work. You know this medication is going to work and then it doesn’t work. And he’s telling he says so in the in this book. He’s like it doesn’t work.

0:11:25 – Dr. Liz

So I was in that camp for a long time, very anti medication, but then my daughter had to go on. She didn’t have to. She’s severely depressed, suicidal. I kept trying to help her different ways and then finally I said, Okay, I’m going to try them. If they don’t work, they don’t work, We’ll go on with our life. And I’ll say I tried everything really but they did end up making a huge impact on her. They really did and they really helped her in a way that psychotherapy didn’t, the parental support, you know, like friends, everything else that I was really trying for her.

So I think it does depend on the person, but I am very familiar with that literature and I think it’s they’re very overprescribed. People are not really looking into what are they doing to the body, what are they doing to the spirit? There’s a story who wrote an excellent book about this as well how he was putting on on anti depressants or anti anxiety as a teenager and how they stopped working. And then you I call it the medication carousel. People jump on that medication carousel and they try to like change it and find another one and find another one. This is not working anymore and some of them have like really awful side effects, you know, like worse than what you’re dealing with. It’s pretty bad. I think there are books coming out these days that are questioning why are we doing this? And they don’t know really why they work like they really don’t from a physiological perspective. I imagine that’s probably what the empty is right about in that book.

0:13:05 – Kerri Hummingbird

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that’s what he’s talking about. Is that there’s what he discovered through his and he? You can check out the book to see what he discovered, but it’s in line with what I personally experienced is that he is saying it’s metabolism and it’s a mitochondria. So when we shift the metabolism and when we heal the mitochondria in the cells and the brain starts to have energy, when the brain has energy, a whole lot of symptoms clear up that. You know. I mean we know we have the sad American diet.

You know we know we have that diet and we know also that we’re not spending enough time in nature. We’re not spending enough time outside. We’re also not spending enough time in soul exploration, like in self inquiry in the inner. So that’s why my book is inner medicine, because, just like you said, I got it Okay.

0:14:01 – Dr. Liz

Yeah, and Yo Hanhari makes very similar points about happiness, about being able to actually even move locations, change your job.

0:14:13 – Kerri Hummingbird

Right, exactly Leave the job.

0:14:17 – Dr. Liz

Leave the job, move to a location that feels better to you, that somehow you connect with spiritually.

0:14:24 – Kerri Hummingbird

You don’t even understand that I love what you said, too, about the medications, because I also have a similar situation with my son and I did make the same choice. I was like, listen, we haven’t tried this. I’m super anti-medication, but if that’s what’s going to help us, we have to at least try it and see. We have to at least try and see if that’s going to work. I agree, I’m in that camp too. If, like, try everything, but see, that’s still the same message of inner medicine try everything, don’t believe the external experts. You have to follow what’s right inside of you. You’ve got to try everything that’s being presented to you personally on your own thumbprint journey of life, in order to figure out, like, what is my path? Because there isn’t one path that’s going to work for everybody. There is no one medicine that’s going to work for everybody. There’s no one approach that’s going to work for everybody. Even if it works for a while, then you’re onto the next lesson. That’s why it’s inner medicine too, because we talk about the great spiral.

It’s not a destination. This is another change in ideas from our Western model to the indigenous model. Is that in the Western model we think, well, if I just do this, this, and follow the steps that the external medicine tells me to follow, I’ll be better, Then I’ll be happy, and then I won’t be upset anymore and everything will work. It works for a little while.

0:15:48 – Dr. Liz

Yeah, it is. It’s such a false promise. Life is hard. Sometimes I will have people come in that say I expect a life to be much easier than this. It’s like you have been sold Really bad promise. You work hard, you buy your little house and you buy all this stuff you want to. Suddenly you’re supposed to be happy One. That’s not the path to happiness. But two, happiness is fleeting. Yeah, life is hard. How about we work for something like contentment or a sense of inner authenticity or moments of happiness? Because the moments will happen during the day. I can’t tell you 100 percent day. That was 100 percent happy. We’re human beings. We feel all kinds of feelings and we have all kinds of ways to get there.

0:16:39 – Kerri Hummingbird

We can learn to see the beauty in all of life that’s showing up, even the devastating things, Even when my dad passed. My dad passing in 2017 was heartbreaking. It was devastating to my family system. It was devastating to relationship with my mom because my dad was always the buffer. It was so hard when my dad died and I still had this because I’m psychic. I had this ability to connect with my dad so I knew he was still around, but it’s like not having his physical presence and not having him there to kind of interrupt arguments and fix things right.

It meant that what it meant that we had to become responsible for the family dynamics. Like each one of us that had been relying on him to heal everything had to step into our power and actually make those choices ourselves right.

And so my dad leaving was the biggest blessing for me and my mom, because if he hadn’t have left, my mom and I would have never worked out our stuff. We would have kept letting him be the buffer, and now we’re enjoying this amazing relationship. It’s like so beautiful. I’ve never had this relationship with my mom before ever. So it’s like so great and I love my dad and I wish he was here and I know why he had to leave.

So it’s like we can really, when we flip these lenses and we go into this different way of seeing the world, we can see that it’s all here for us. Everything is happening and we’re not going to stay in permanent happy zone, like Western people just want to stay in permanent happy, permanent prosperity, permanent like permanent smile fixed on your face, and that is not true. And when we’re like that and then life is trying to send us things to knock us out of that false illusion, like COVID, like devastation, like loss, like anything that would get you to crack open, to feel the rest of the human experience yes, right, yes, and that’s what I think inner medicine is also about is really flipping that perspective and learning how to navigate inside for answers to, instead of outside, like how many people put their authority outside of themselves. Dr Liz, you know.

0:18:53 – Dr. Liz

Let me address that from my perspective a little bit, because I totally resonate with yours. I do, but sometimes people put me into that box and some of that is a system we’re in. I don’t take insurance because insurance requires that you have a diagnosis to be reimbursed. People still want that. Sometimes, though, if they want to get out of network reimbursement or something like that, but it starts sort of at this like fundamental level of our business system.

Let’s say, in this country not so much in other countries, but definitely in the US there’s that like oh, you have to be diagnosed so that we will pay for your such and such. You know all of this stuff, and so it’s like as a professional, you’re trained in that when you go through school, for I mean for me PhD in clinical psychology in the 90s, so I was definitely trained in diagnosis and diagnosis as informative of how you’re going to treat, because in treatments based on research, let’s say, all right. So here we are, flash forward 30 years later, and I’m in a very different spiritual place myself, and sometimes the way I see a diagnosis is sometimes people do want it. It’s not necessary at all to help somebody access their inner wisdom, and the more hypnosis I do. It is irrelevant often and at the same time it can be informative in terms of someone being able to take that and use it to empower themselves. So I know in your book you talk about being diagnosed as a borderline personality disorder, and I’m actually a specialist in that area.

But what I say to people is you can recover, you can learn skills to where you don’t meet this criteria at all, and or you access the really positive parts of your personality that others are defining as negative. So that part of you that is passionate, that part of you that does care deeply, like those, are such wonderful, beautiful parts. So how about we look at it that way? Instead of oh, this is something you are, you can’t change, your helpless to change it, this is you forever, and, like you said, then it can become an excuse for behavior versus like oh, wait, a minute, let me step back here, pause. What is the choice I want to make? So really an empowering sense versus putting you in a box and keeping you down, kind of sense. That’s how I see it these days.

0:21:28 – Kerri Hummingbird

Yeah, I love that you’re saying that. I love that you’re saying that, dr Liz, because one of the things that really healed me when I left, when I just kind of walked away from the whole psychotherapy model and I started just going okay, life, what do you have for me, what other way? You know, there’s got to be some other solution for me. And I ended up in energy medicine. And when I went to the Four Winds with Alberto Vialdo and I studied energy medicine, one of the major things that he does is he says right up front your diagnosis is BS. He’s like that’s not true. He said so you need. It’s like a curse in a way. It’s a curse Okay. So, like in shamanic terms, I completely agree it is often a curse.

0:22:08 – Dr. Liz

It’s a curse, yes.

0:22:09 – Kerri Hummingbird

Okay, let’s explore what a curse is for everybody who’s like. What does that mean? It means that you’re predicting a future outcome for someone and a present outcome from somebody, using a term that is predefined and it has certain qualities to it and you’re placing them in that box and it’s like a little cage that you put people when they’re that they don’t know how to get themselves out of that and they believe you, they take it on as their identity, yes, and so when you take on something as your identity, you think you can’t get rid of it, you think you can’t change it.

And you and this is one of those those labels like the borderline personality, one where it’s like you’re broken, like you are broken and not only that, but you ruin relationships, you are terrible to be around, everybody has a hard time being around you, you know.

It’s like one of those where it’s like you’re ostracized and so it’s like really hard to be labeled that. And I see people in Facebook groups and I’ve tried to inject light into those Facebook groups but they don’t, they will not receive any light on it because they feel that broken. Like if you go into any one of these BPD groups, they’ll just say I’m broken, I can’t fix myself, I’m terrible, I guess you know. And then I’m just punishing them a victim Like they’ll flip around like all over the place in victim consciousness and they don’t want to know that they could be empowered. So the thing that I went through with Alberto is he said look, you have your book of fates that was handed to you. You can close that book and open the book of destiny and you can write the pages of your destiny and you have the power to do that.

Yes, absolutely that changed everything for me because I went okay, so what do I have to do? In order to write my book of destiny, I have to be willing to lose my identity, and at that point I was willing to commit suicide. So I felt so low about myself that I was willing to commit suicide and leave my children motherless, you know. And so I had to ask myself well, if I’m willing to do that, what if I stay in the body but I die to myself? I died to the identity I’ve constructed over my lifetime. What if I’m able to transform myself by letting go of what I think I am and who I think I am, and what I think I know, in order to become something greater that my soul knows I am? That became my book of destiny, Dr Liz.

0:24:39 – Dr. Liz

Look, here I am.

0:24:40 – Kerri Hummingbird

I’m a truth you guys Please like. If I can do this, you can too. If you read my first book Awakening to Me, you’ll feel the vibration, you’ll hear the way I was thinking about myself. I was very vulnerable, transparent in that book, talking about how I thought and felt about myself. And now flash forward Intermedicine, you will see the difference. It is transformation. Transformation is real, it works and you can do it.

0:25:08 – Dr. Liz

Yes, absolutely yes. While you’re talking, I’m thinking about the core healing technique. I do that we’ve talked about before where we go back and we look at beliefs that developed, often in early childhood. Sometimes that’s adolescence or early adulthood, but it’s like when someone gives you that diagnosis a person of authority sometimes you develop a belief around it that I am and I am belief, I am this, this is me, and you do begin to identify with that, and sometimes, when I see that in my practice, it’s heartbreaking for me, because part of my work, I think part of the reason that person shows up for me too, is to say you are not that identity. You’re so much more. Let’s form a new identity for you Instead of I am depressed, I always have been, I always will be, or I am always an anxious person.

It’s so limiting, really, and often there’s an underlying belief that’s going on there, and so part of the task is to look at that and see where did it develop and then heal it. Heal it in some way so that the person has the opportunity to do it a different way, live a different way. So your work is just doing that in a different way than I do it. You know your way, like, yeah, let’s go to the mountain and do this, versus I’m like, come to my office and do it, yeah. And.

0:26:32 – Kerri Hummingbird

I’m out there, you know. So I place myself way out there to give plenty of room for everybody else to explore spirituality, because it’s been taboo, it’s been no, no you know, it’s been, you know, religion. Our systems, all of our systems, have tried to make us afraid of ourselves, of ourselves and our planet.

0:26:57 – Dr. Liz

Yeah, Well you’re. You’re also in Texas, so you’re in Austin, which is probably one of the most liberal cities in Texas.

0:27:04 – Kerri Hummingbird

It’s still Texas.

0:27:05 – Dr. Liz

Exactly Like very and there is an. I say that because I grew up in Texas. It’s impressive.

0:27:11 – Kerri Hummingbird

I grew up outside of Dallas.

0:27:12 – Dr. Liz

I went to UD Austin for undergrad, but having lived outside of Texas now for most of my life. So let’s say the first, first 22 years or so, we’re in Texas, and then I went to graduate school over in Florida and stayed here.

0:27:26 – Kerri Hummingbird

It’s such a religious state in a way that people don’t understand everything about this place and the consciousness just speaking from somebody who’s sensitive, aware, open, empathic, connected and my chart is all about this collective subconscious and so I perceive and feel everything at that level. It’s like, yeah, this place is so impressive to people, like it is really. There’s like a cloud of oppression, especially for women in this place. So I stay here because I’m a light. I’m a light that’s here yeah.

And to break up the density and to poke and question at the belief systems and to unravel it and provoke it and say that’s not true, that’s actually a lie, and I’m a stand for truth. I’m a stand for truth being expressed.

0:28:18 – Dr. Liz

Absolutely yes, and that’s some hard work. It really is.

0:28:23 – Kerri Hummingbird

It is. It causes a lot of stress in my body and I have to relax myself constantly.

0:28:28 – Dr. Liz

Yes, the last time I was in Texas was like around July 4th 2018. So it was when I met my husband, actually, and he had. He has family in Arkansas and Louisiana and some of my family origin is still in the Plano area outside of Dallas, and so we sort of did this family tour we had just met and he wanted to. He wanted me to meet his mom and some people who are important, and I said, well, as long as we’re that close, I might as well go visit my family. I don’t really visit that much. In fact, I had not been back since 2013 when my mother passed away, so I went back for her service and funeral and had not been back to Texas since then. After that trip, I said to him I never have to go to Texas again, like that is a release for me. I never have to step foot in that state again, like and this is my cheese too Okay.

0:29:25 – Kerri Hummingbird

But there’s actually a palpable difference, like when, in the energetics, like when I drive a lot to Santa Fe because my teachers are out there and so I’ll drive across Texas and into Santa Fe, and when across over into New Mexico, there is a palpable difference in the energetics.

0:29:43 – Dr. Liz

I bet.

0:29:44 – Kerri Hummingbird

It is just like night and day you know, and then I get aware of, like the oppression I live under here constantly. Yes, it’s like, wow, this is strengthening me. But see again, I look at it like, oh, I’m strengthening my light, I’m strengthening my capacity. You know, the tension of this place and the oppression of this place allows me to strengthen my capacity to deal with untruth and and and hostility and negative energies and negative projections and all those things that get stirred up, even in my neighborhood because people are, so you know, very religious, and they used to come to my door, you know, and try to convert me and I I finally just told the woman.

I said, listen, my ancestry is part Cherokee and so we were actually killed and displaced by Christians and I’m not going to embrace this and you can stop coming here because it’s offensive to me actually. Good, so I guess they put they put me on the list of do not go there, don’t bother this woman anymore.

0:30:49 – Dr. Liz

Yes, yeah, and I think to. I mean right now I’m living in Florida, which is like geez, the whole state is. I don’t know what’s happening to this day, but it’s shifting to like craziness. What I define is craziness like super conservative, you know. I mean Texas, they pretty much you get a birth certificate and a gun, and in Florida it’s heading the same way. So it’s like here, here you go.

But it’s, it’s craziness to here my point. In saying that is, wherever we are, it seems like we also find our community. That’s really important wherever you are. So it’s like, yes, I love your frame on it. I am developing strength and perseverance and I am the light here for people who need you in that community that you’re in and that can be developed anywhere. That it’s a perspective, it’s an attitude we take.

0:31:43 – Kerri Hummingbird

Yeah, and it’s a lighthouse and so you can. So, rather than trying to avoid problems I mean, this is really like the just the message of inner medicine is, rather than try to avoid your problems or put a bandaid on them or just not feel them or not know that they’re happening because you’re taking a medication or whatever used to be mine was a bottle of wine, you know, rather than distract and avoid it, it’s like be with it, actually embrace that challenge and see what does it have to offer me? What, like soul evolution, does this challenge have for me? As I embrace it and move through it and really adopt this idea of it’s for me, by me, by my soul and through me that is evolving me and that is my medicine. And your medicine bag gets real big, you know when you look at life that way?

0:32:44 – Dr. Liz

Yes, it’s so hard for people Like they consciously say I don’t want to feel this, I don’t know how to do this. It feels too overwhelming. Like what would you say to them in that moment? I know what I say, but I really want to hear your, your wisdom here.

0:32:58 – Kerri Hummingbird

I can understand that feeling sense. If you’ve bottled up your emotions for a really long time and you stepped over yourself a whole bunch in your life and you’re at the place where even the tiniest little stupid thing can set you off and you’re just so upset about it, that’s because you’ve got a backlog of like a whole lava ocean of anger and resentment and betrayal and all that stuff brewing inside of you.

And if you don’t actually release that stuff, you will take it out on somebody that doesn’t deserve it, and you know. So you want to be responsible about it and feel your feelings, and you know we can learn how to ground to Mother Earth, because emotion is energy and motion and motion is just energy is just energy, with different frequencies and different feeling senses in the body when we ground. We went and this is the main thing I had. There were several key lessons at the forewinds, but one of the lessons was that I can ground and when I ground myself, I can channel the energy through me and it doesn’t take me out. That was one thing that led to that. Diagnosis of borderline right is like it’s emotion, but emotion is actually an evolution in human consciousness right now, so it’s not a problem, it’s just new.

It’s like people are actually exploring emotion now, when we’ve been in reptilian brain and reactive brain removing it to the limbic brain and opening up the limbic brain, and so it’s just a mastery of a new skill set for humanity is how to process these emotions. So what you want to do is get really, really grounded, because the more grounded you are like a tree, the more roots you have in the earth, the more this energy can just pass through. It’s like a house. The house has an electrical system, it has a grounding wire, otherwise the whole house will blow up. So if you’re not grounded, your whole house is going to blow up. So you got to get grounded and then start practicing letting little bits of the emotion flow.

Start practicing letting it and trust It’ll pass. It’s a wave, right, it’ll pass If you let it pass. It’ll just pass through you, wash you clear and it’ll be gone. It might take an hour, it might take a day, it might take a week. It’ll pass through you and it’ll be gone. And then the next wave of emotion. You can just become like this hollow bone that the emotion just passes through and you can just be, even not even taking it personally, like it’s yours, it’s not yours, it’s just, it’s just emotion passing through, that’s all it is. And then when you get into that place, you can just allow it to be exactly what it is and you don’t take it personally and don’t make it about you. It just goes through.

0:35:44 – Dr. Liz

Oh, I love it. I love it so much. That sounds really a beautiful way to frame it for people and for them to experience it as well versus traumatic, like that feels beautiful, evolutionary, centered, it feels peaceful. I mean, emotions aren’t often considered that right when someone’s going through, let’s say, intense emotions, intense fear or sadness or anger. But to see it in that perspective, it takes some of that like oof out of it, like that I don’t know scariness to it out of it. Maybe that’s just my perception here of it, but no, but it’s actually I’m not someone who covers a whole lot.

0:36:29 – Kerri Hummingbird

It’s actually important to feel it and you know here’s. Here’s another enlightening thing I realized I was like, wow, I read that book Power vs Forest by David Hawking’s and when you look in that book he shows the matrix of they’ve muscle tested, the matrix of all of the human experiences, the emotions, shames at the bottom, but two stops before you shift over from fear into power, into true power, which is love. When you two stops before is anger.

Anger is fire yeah yeah, firepower, it’s purification, yes, you know, and so it purifies you as you allow it to move through you. It purifies and clears the false, because the only reason the anger comes up is because something not true is in your face and inside of you, right? And so the anger arises to redirect you and help you have energy and momentum to move through the false and motivate yourself and get moving.

0:37:28 – Dr. Liz

Yes, and that’s why you’re there.

0:37:30 – Kerri Hummingbird

Yes, yeah, and we have a whole society that says you can’t be angry.

0:37:35 – Dr. Liz

Yeah, well, I think it is. I do see it evolving, though, that now that is more and more okay. I love how you framed how the task now is to learn how to handle emotion, because people do complain Like I don’t know our generation. We’re about this. We are the same age. I don’t know when your birthday is, but we’re 53 on this interview. Yeah, we are.

We both are and I will hear my generation complain about how emotional like teenagers and, you know, people in their 20s are now and it’s like, yes, they are to see it as like oh yes, these kids are feeling now. They are in a way that that kids did not feel in the past and they have had different traumas, like worldwide traumas that probably kids have not had since what, like World War Two or something where the entire world feels like it was affected. They’re feeling their way through that, but it’s like they don’t often have the development yet to be able to really work through that and write through it and learn the skills to do that. I mean, the task, I think, is that they do learn the skills to do that, but it’s not something that’s so negative, like why complain about that these are is actually positive.

0:38:57 – Kerri Hummingbird

Yeah, it’s helping. When you feel your emotions, you get into your body more, which is embodiment.

0:39:04 – Dr. Liz

Yes.

0:39:04 – Kerri Hummingbird

And when you’re in your body, your heart can open. And when your heart opens, you start realizing the effects of your words and the effects of your actions and you let your heart and your body tell you when, like something landed the wrong way or oh my gosh, no, I need to say that a different way, or I don’t feel okay with myself that I said it that way, I need to go apologize, Like, and then you, you see less and less of the narcissism trait. That’s why it’s so highlighted right now. Like people are really annoyed by this narcissist empath thing, that conversation, but I don’t even like to use labels like that. I use it just to tell people like that’s what’s going on. But it really is. Is the disconnection from heart and and feeling. That is what that narcissism is. It’s not. It’s a really deep wounding inside and an inability to feel.

And if you can’t feel your feelings and you can’t actually go inside and feel that then your heart doesn’t open and your heart stays closed and you’re in defense mechanism because you don’t want to be wrong, correct and not able to empathize with other people.

0:40:14 – Dr. Liz

That’s what that is.

0:40:15 – Kerri Hummingbird

Yeah, if you, if you can’t soften all that and feel your own feelings and feel and hear heal those core wounds inside, then your heart can open and then, yeah, you’re closed and you won’t like negotiate or feel or want to hear anybody else’s perspective because you’re in total walled off mode, like I don’t want, I can.

I and I realize that people like that are in so much pain that they cannot feel one more way that they’re wrong, like they just cannot have one more way they’re wrong show up. So, rather than be angry with them which is giving them reasons to feel bad, it’s like, okay, I see that you’re not capable right now of facing yourself and your own feelings in your body and the traumas that have caused you to feel that way, and you know. And so it’s like the answer is to soften the answers, to be more gentle and more understanding and more compassionate, as empathic people like to just soften all the judgment around that and just be like, wow, this person’s in a lot of pain and they don’t want to feel it. They’re walling themselves off from themselves and it’s not about me that they’re doing that. It’s not about me at all the fact that they don’t apologize or they won’t tell me it’s not about me.

0:41:28 – Dr. Liz

That’s the most compassionate take I’ve ever heard on narcissism and I’ve heard a lot. I am so impressed I had to deal with narcissistic mother myself, narcissistic ex-husband who even yeah, it’s funny Yesterday was Mother’s Day. Yes, yes, before you know, this is the day after Mother’s Day that we’re recording this. It’ll air later, but we’re recording the day after Mother’s Day and my ex-husband sent all these pictures in the group chat and the family chat of my girls, my two girls, with him. Okay, when I talk to my daughter later, she’s off at college and she started laughing. She goes did you realize? Like you weren’t actually in any of those pictures, it was all with dad. And I said, yeah, I thought maybe I just saved him for Father’s Day, you know like, send him back to him like here. And she and I just sort of laughed about it. We thought it was funny and this. There was a sense of like, oh, that’s just him, like it’s nothing about me, really, that’s just him trying to get me.

And I think his intention was like oh, here’s pictures of your kids on Mother’s Day. I think 10 years ago that wouldn’t have happened. It would have made me so angry. It just would have been like oh, you know, you’re such a dick really. Like, what are you doing? But now, with a, with a lot of growth and a lot of work around it and more understanding, I think, around narcissism, it’s like ah yeah, that’s just. Him had nothing to really do with me. He wasn’t trying to offend me in any way. His intention was actually to give me something on Mother’s Day. It was just his delivery that fell a little short, you know.

0:43:18 – Kerri Hummingbird

The disconnection you know when the heart’s closed and you’re in kind of defense mode and protection mode. You don’t really know how you’re landing with somebody else because you’ve turned off all your sensing filters, right, like you’ve got numb. Like you’re numb, you’re not feeling anything, so you really don’t know. And then that’s why so many people rely on the brain. Right, but the brain is that’s where you know the egoic self lives and the false personality and the false personality can really get you twisted up, and it can make you do things that you think are right in the moment, but you’re it’s really not right you know your brain is just lying to you.

0:43:54 – Dr. Liz

Yeah, how do people recognize the false personality?

0:43:58 – Kerri Hummingbird

So the greatest way to recognize the false personality is to start embodiment, and that’s why this path is so powerful.

When you enter a container where you’re practicing the four agreements, for example, which is a total tech, indigenous wisdom, when you start practicing the four directions and opening sacred space, when you connect with nature, when you connect with your body, when you feel your feelings, that starts to wake up what’s true.

It starts to wake up. It cleanses and purifies your vessel and you start to wake up to what’s true. Because when your vessels all clogged up and you’re sort of like keeping it that way, you’re, you know, you’re kind of like there’s no release valve and then the no information is getting in or out. So when you unclog the pipes, so to speak, you start to have some spaciousness inside of you and that spaciousness is your greater intelligence. And your greater intelligence starts to inform you like, huh, that doesn’t feel right. And your body starts to tell you huh, I don’t think that’s true, you’ll get a tight throat, or your your stomach will get all upset, or you know, some little other clue will happen in your body that tells you some things out of alignment, some things not true, and that’s how you start to unpack this brain.

But the first key decision and this is another really huge gift from my crazy labels that I got from Psycho Psychotherapy is that I was like wait a second. So if my mind is crazy, why would I listen to anything? It has to say, oh my gosh. Well, why if, if you know and I thought about that quote from Einstein you know like insanity is really about still doing things the same way?

0:45:45 – Dr. Liz

Yeah, you have to get outside the system?

0:45:49 – Kerri Hummingbird

Yes, in order to reprogram it.

0:45:53 – Dr. Liz

Yes, my mentor said to me just the other day that often he’ll say you know, the mind tricks us all the time.

0:45:59 – Kerri Hummingbird

The mind is not accurate.

0:46:01 – Dr. Liz

So it is a process of sometimes tricking the mind back, but I really like yours. It’s like okay, let’s see what it feels like. Let’s see if we can get a sense of what that deeper true self feels like not necessarily the mind, and that is often an embodied sense that people and you know doing that all the way you just cited.

0:46:24 – Kerri Hummingbird

Living contemplation, then, are not so much about like having no thoughts.

0:46:32 – Dr. Liz

Oh yeah, no.

0:46:32 – Kerri Hummingbird

It’s more about witnessing them, Like yes, I think that’s one of the biggest things.

0:46:39 – Dr. Liz

Meditation. I had someone say it to me literally just last week I can’t meditate because I can never stop my thoughts and I was like, oh my God, it’s, it’s your thoughts are never going to stop, never. I have a very dear friend who goes and does the 10 days of silent meditation, the vipassana meditation, and people will say, oh, how can you do so much quietness? And she’ll say, oh my God, it’s so loud the entire time, like the mind never stops sending you thoughts. The key there is oh, let’s witness, let’s bring our attention back to the breath or where we want it to be and practicing restraint.

0:47:18 – Kerri Hummingbird

you know that restraint of like watching yourself go into the story and then not feeding the story. And this is also the game of emotions, so it’s like the story will often provoke the emotions that you actually need to feel, and so the story can be useful, and this is what I wish all psychotherapists would realize, and I’m, you know, I’m heading out there to share this message. Yes, let clients tell the story until the emotion is there, and then practice restraint.

No more story, just feel feel no words, just feel and the feeling, sense of that and moving through that emotion will actually clear the whole story. Yes, because it’s just a story.

0:48:05 – Dr. Liz

I think you’re picturing like really involved people who can get to the feeling. Sometimes they can get to the feeling is part of why they’re there.

0:48:14 – Kerri Hummingbird

Yes, yeah, so you know, meditation is exactly like you said. It’s like the reason people go to 10 day for post-inary tree is to be quiet, is so that they get still, they don’t let themselves distract from the inner reality from the inner conversation they let themselves be still so that they can witness it all. Yes, that’s what, and there’s no distractions from the outside world to take you away from the awareness of it.

0:48:47 – Dr. Liz

Right.

0:48:48 – Kerri Hummingbird

And when you’re doing that, you can actually clear so much stuff just by being still and being with it, not letting yourself distract or go away from it, but really keeping your focus inside and not on other people. When you come in. It’s amazing how much you can shift, and this is if you can’t go on a five day retreat. You know, try a float for a couple of hours. You know, dark and silent. Yeah, Like, just lie in the float, dark and silent, nothing else but you and just be with it.

0:49:19 – Dr. Liz

Yeah, you talk about that some in the book, how the floating is really a beautiful part of how you ground actually, which is ironic. Yeah, you’re floating but you’re grounding, but saltwater is grounding. It is Saltwater is grounding. Yes, and not everybody has a tank by them. You know, you live in a city that, I’m assuming Austin has some floating tanks. I mean, I live in a huge area too where I could locate some floating tanks, or I can literally go to the ocean and float.

0:49:48 – Kerri Hummingbird

You literally just go to the ocean and float the thing about the ocean is that then there’s other distractions like birds and other things. So sensory deprivation is helpful because you know the and this is what the Jankies Richard Red talks about, and this is also just Buddhist belief, but there’s like the senses of the five thieves, you know, and so that takes us out of being in this inner contemplation realm. But then that’s not where it stops, because it’s also about being in presence with the senses. So it’s so interesting to see the Eastern philosophies up until now have been one part of the curriculum on.

Earth School. But now we’re like even branching deeper into this embodiment realm is about like okay, how do I bring presence even to smelling this rose, how do I bring presence to this conversation? How do I bring presence to my breath and my body and how do I notice? And that’s what shamanism is. Shamanism is in the matter. It’s in the matter.

0:50:51 – Dr. Liz

Beautiful. So we are coming to the end of our time here. Can you tell people how to find you and how to find your new book?

0:50:59 – Kerri Hummingbird

Absolutely so. My book is on Amazon, of course. Inner Medicine, Karrie Hummingbird, and my first name is K E R R I and the website has everything. My website you can go to Kerrihummingbird.com. K E R R I, hummingbirdc.om. And if you would like to have the first chapter of Inner Medicine and I think I also give a grounding meditation when you sign up for my email list you can get that at Kerrihummingbird.com. K E R R I, hummingbird.com. Forward slash Inner Medicine, all one word.

0:51:37 – Dr. Liz

Fantastic. Oh, nice meditation too.

0:51:42 – Kerri Hummingbird

Yeah a little grounding meditation. We were just talking about grounding.

0:51:45 – Dr. Liz

Yes, yes, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom with us today.

0:51:52 – Kerri Hummingbird

Thanks for having me back and blessings to everybody.

0:52:33 – Dr. Liz

I hope you truly enjoyed today’s episode. Remember that you can get free hypnosis downloads over at my website, drlizhypnosis.com. Drlizhypnosisc.om. I work all over the world doing hypnosis, so if you’re interested in working with me, please schedule a free consultation over at my website and we’ll see what your goals are and if I can be of service to you in helping you reach them. Finally, if you liked today’s episode, please subscribe to the podcast or tell a friend that way, more and more people learn about the power of hypnosis. I write everyone. Have a wonderful week, peace.

Transcribed by https://podium.page